Israel in effective control of entire Gaza land border after taking Philadelphi Corridor in south
Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.
In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.
Hagari did not spell out what “operational” control referred to, but an Israeli military official earlier said there were Israeli “boots on the ground” along parts of the corridor. The border with Egypt along the southern edge was Gaza’s only land border that Israel had not controlled directly.
“The Philadelphi Corridor served as an oxygen line for Hamas, which it regularly used to smuggle weapons into the area of the Gaza Strip,” Hagari said, claiming that troops had “discovered around 20 tunnels” in the area.
Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported a “high-level Egyptian source” as saying that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive.
“There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera, which is linked to state intelligence. “Israel is using these allegations to justify continuing the operation on the Palestinian city of Rafah and prolonging the war for political purposes.”
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Key events
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, hit out at the United Nations on Wednesday, questioning the efficacy of the world intergovernmental organisation in light of its failure to stop fighting in Gaza.
Addressing lawmakers from his ruling AK party, Erdoğan said: “Let alone stopping the genocide, the United Nations could not even protect its own personnel or aid workers.”
He added: “Not only humanity but also the United Nations died along with its spirit in Gaza.”
Erdoğan’s comments came as the UN security council met to discuss a deadly Israeli attack on a displacement camp west of Rafah. Erdoğan has been a vocal critic of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Iran has started the registration of candidates for an early election next month after the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, Iranian interior minister Ahmad Vahidi told state TV, according to Reuters.
Once seen as a possible successor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi’s sudden death has triggered a race among hardliners to influence the selection of Iran’s next leader.
“The vetting process will be seven days and then qualified candidates will have almost two weeks for the election campaign,” Vahidi told state TV. The Guardian Council will publish the list of qualified candidates on 11 June.
Reuters reports that moderate politicians have accused the 12-member hardline Guardian Council of disqualifying rivals to hardline candidates, who are expected to dominate the upcoming presidential race.
“We came to Khan Younis, a city in the south of Gaza where heavy fighting has taken place over the past few months, and it is all but flattened,” said Yasmina Guerda, humanitarian affairs officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza.
“Now tens of thousands of people have started to come back to see what’s become of their homes, to find their clothes, their photographs, their memories, and to figure out if anything can be salvaged,” Guerda added.
Here are some of the latest images of Khan Younis that reflect Guerda’s comments, via the newswires:
Car ramming attack kills two Israeli soldiers in occupied West Bank, says army
A car ramming attack killed two Israeli soldiers near the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army said early on Thursday.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the army had earlier reported a car ramming attack on Wednesday near an Israeli settlement outside Nablus, without specifying who the victims were.
It later identified them as soldiers Eliya Hilel and Diego Shvisha Harsaj, both 20 and members of the Kfir brigade.
According to Israeli media, the army has launched a manhunt for the perpetrator of the attack.
AFP reports that Hamas welcomed the attack near Nablus, saying in a statement it was a “natural response” against the “crimes of the enemy”.
Egyptian president urges international community to ‘stop any attempt at forcing Palestinians to forcibly flee their land’
Speaking after Xi, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged the international community to ensure Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are not displaced from their war-ravaged territory, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP)
“I … call on the international community to immediately provide for long term humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip and to end the Israeli siege,” Sisi said.
According to AFP, he also called for the international community to “stop any attempt at forcing Palestinians to forcibly flee their land”.
Sisi’s comments come after the Israeli army said on Wednesday it had gained “operational control” over the strategic Philadelphi corridor (see 07.48 BST) along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
“Sisi has a deep sense that Egypt is increasingly backed into a corner and wants every support from major countries he can get,” Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow at London’s Chatham House thinktank, told AFP.
Chinese president Xi Jinping called on Thursday for a peace conference on the war between Israel and Hamas, as he addressed Arab leaders at a forum aimed at bolstering ties with the region, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Xi is this week hosting Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Emirati president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and several other Arab leaders.
Itself an oil producer, China has also long imported crude from the Middle East, where it has sought to expand its influence in recent years.
It has positioned itself as a more neutral actor on the Israel-Palestinian conflict than its rival the US, advocating for a two-state solution while also maintaining good ties with Israel.
Addressing delegates, Xi on Thursday expressed support for a “broad-based” peace conference to resolve the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“The Middle East is a land bestowed with broad prospects for development, but the war is still raging on it,” Xi said, reports AFP. “War should not continue indefinitely. Justice should not be absent forever,” he added.
Analysts say China is seeking to leverage the war in Gaza to boost its standing in the region, framing its efforts to end that conflict against perceived US inaction.
“Beijing sees the ongoing conflict as a golden opportunity to criticise the west’s double standards on the international scene and call for an alternative global order,” Camille Lons, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP.
“When speaking about the war in Gaza, it speaks … to a wider audience, and frames the conflict around the opposition between the west and the global south,” she added.
Israel in effective control of entire Gaza land border after taking Philadelphi Corridor in south
Israel is in effective control of Gaza’s entire land border after taking control of a buffer zone along the border with Egypt, Israel’s military has said, a move that risks complicating its relationship with Egypt.
In a televised briefing on Wednesday, chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the Philadelphi Corridor, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.
Hagari did not spell out what “operational” control referred to, but an Israeli military official earlier said there were Israeli “boots on the ground” along parts of the corridor. The border with Egypt along the southern edge was Gaza’s only land border that Israel had not controlled directly.
“The Philadelphi Corridor served as an oxygen line for Hamas, which it regularly used to smuggle weapons into the area of the Gaza Strip,” Hagari said, claiming that troops had “discovered around 20 tunnels” in the area.
Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported a “high-level Egyptian source” as saying that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive.
“There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera, which is linked to state intelligence. “Israel is using these allegations to justify continuing the operation on the Palestinian city of Rafah and prolonging the war for political purposes.”
You can read the full story here:
Opening summary
It has gone 9.30am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
Israeli forces have taken control of a buffer zone along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the country’s military said on Wednesday, giving Israel effective authority over the Palestinian territory’s entire land border.
In a televised briefing, chief military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces had gained “operational” control over the “Philadelphi Corridor”, using the Israeli military’s code name for the 14km-long corridor along the Gaza Strip’s only border with Egypt.
“The Philadelphi Corridor served as an oxygen line for Hamas, which it regularly used to smuggle weapons into the area of the Gaza Strip,” Hagari said, adding that troops “discovered around 20 tunnels” in the area.
Egypt’s Al-Qahera News reported that Israel was using claims of tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza as cover for its Rafah offensive, citing a “high-level Egyptian source”.
“There is no truth to Israeli media reports of the existence of tunnels on the Egyptian border with Gaza,” the source told Al-Qahera.
More on that in a moment, but first here is a summary of other main events.
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Bombs used in an Israeli airstrike that caused a huge blaze at a tented area for displaced people in Rafah on Sunday and killed at least 45 people, were made in the US, reported the New York Times. It cited visual evidence and weapons experts, including “key” details in weapon debris and a unique identifier code that linked weapon fragments, seen in a video, to an aerospace manufacturer based in Colorado.
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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday hit out at the United Nations and called on the “Islamic world” to react after the latest deadly Israeli strikes in Gaza. “The UN cannot even protect its own staff. What are you waiting for to act? The spirit of the United Nations is dead in Gaza,” Erdoğan told lawmakers from his AKP party.
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The US state department said that it opposes “threats or intimidation” against members of the international criminal court (ICC) in the wake of the Guardian’s reporting on Israel’s secret “war” of surveillance, hacking and threats aimed at sabotaging The Hague’s Israel and Palestine investigation.
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The Biden administration said recent Israeli operations and attacks in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah do not constitute a major ground operation that crosses any US red lines, and that it is also closely monitoring a probe into Sunday’s deadly strike on a tent camp it called “tragic”. Speaking after Israeli tanks were seen near al-Awda mosque, a landmark in central Rafah, national security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the US was not turning a “blind eye” to the plight of Palestinian civilians.
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Wednesday that he expected fighting in Gaza to continue throughout 2024 at least.
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In northern Gaza, Israeli tanks shelled several Gaza City neighbourhoods, and forces thrust deeper in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight biggest historic refugee camps, with residents saying large residential districts were destroyed by the army.
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The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they confronted Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, as well as blowing up previously planted explosive devices.
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The Israeli military said three soldiers had been killed and three others badly wounded in combat in southern Gaza on Wednesday, without elaborating. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan radio said the soldiers were hurt by an explosive device set off in a building in Rafah.
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A car ramming attack killed two Israeli soldiers near the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army said early on Thursday. It identified them as soldiers Eliya Hilel and Diego Shvisha Harsaj, both 20 and members of the Kfir brigade. According to Israeli media, the army has launched a manhunt for the perpetrator of the attack.